How To Use Wordpress For Blogging

If you've been reading our feature on business blogging and how to start marketing your business with a blogging site, read on to find out about how to use Wordpress for blogging or as a business website.

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as a full content management system (CMS) through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and blog themes available.

Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day. Wordpress is one of the most widely used platforms, hosting over 200 million websites, mainly because it’s simple to use, flexible and easy to install.

Like Drupal, WordPress is also an Open Source project. It enables you to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee. The CMS makes it easy to start a blog.

Wordpress.Org Versus Wordpress.Com

WordPress.org is completely customisable and can be used for almost anything. There is a service called WordPress.com, which lets you get started with a new and free WordPress-based blog in seconds, but varies in several ways and is less flexible than the WordPress.org you download and install yourself.

WordPress.org is an ideal starting block and the installation process is painless. Within minutes you will have a working website that can be updated and maintained through an administration section.

However, because it was initially designed as a blogging system, adding commonly used website features, such as e-commerce, user permissions and workflow queues can be a little more complex.

Sadly, it is a victim of its own success in that it is targeted by spam bots and hackers. So don’t allow un-moderated comments on your Wordpress site, and prepare to see more gambling adverts than you can shake a stick at.

Final Word on Wordpress

Great for blogs, small brochure sites, or anyone new to content management systems, but lacks the power and extendibility to run a complex site, without in-depth programming knowledge. Keep an eye out for spam.